Posted
by
simoniker
on Thursday March 11, 2004 @01:45AM
from the or-bust dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Director of the Mex-Areohab project, Omar Diaz, is interviewed today on the feasibility of modifying the Martian climate and terraforming with mini-greenhouses. At higher than 5,000 meters above sea level, on the volcano Pico de Orizaba, the Mexican model can be compared to many oases in the desert and contrasts with industrial-scale terraforming by Zubrin and McKay, among others, who use fluorocarbons, orbital mirrors, polar melting and pollution machines. One planet's pollution is another planet's rain machine, but the thrust of the interview seems to maintain that micro-terraforming is just faster and more efficient."

>So isn't the thickness of the atmosphere more or less proportional to the planet's mass?

A number of factors, including mass, determine the thickness of a planet's atmosphere. Others include composition and temperature, along with a whole host of more subtle effects.

Mars, in fact, could (and did, at one point) have an atmosphere as thick as the Earth's. Mars' atmosphere was literally blasted away by meteor impacts early in the solar system's history. Mass was definitely the main factor here: because

It doesn't take a lot of gravity to hold an atmosphere in place. Look at Titan, it has a mass of only 1.35E23 Kg (compared to Earth's 5.98E24 Kg) and atmosphereic pressure of 1.6 bar. The moon has a mass of 7.35E22 so surely it could support a breathable atmosphere (say 0.5 bar).

Unlike microwavable dinners, we can't just nuke it to heat it up. Or can we? While massive use of nuclear detonations on Earth would chill the planet ("nuclear winter"), would the immense release of various gasses and energies actually increase the average temperature of Mars? Not that I would seriously suggest we start our first off-planet colonies with an interplanetary nuclear barrage or anything.

Foo: I'm in favor of detonating lots of nukes on mars, just to see what happens.Bar: Not sure, but I think seeing Venus's atmosphere sent outwards a few hundred kilometres would look pretty cool.Baz: Yeah, maybe they could have a pay-per view special to fund the costs.

Interestingly, I just listened to someone discuss the awesome power of a sight that fewer and fewer people have seen: nuking the Earth.

On NPR's Fresh Air [npr.org], former Secretary of the Air Force Thomas Reed talked about his new book, At the Abyss: An Insider's History of the Cold War. In addition to his policial role, he was for a while a "consultant to the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a well-known center for nuclear weapons research." As such, he helped design nuclear weapons, and was present during their testing.

He pointed out that witnessing an above-ground nuclear detonation was itself a life-changing event, and that the experience colored the decisions of all who saw and felt it. The light, he said of a Christmas Island [nuclearweaponarchive.org] blast, wasn't just bright -- it was all-enveloping, even through the way-beyond-dark goggles. And the instant blast of heat, that made you want to run away, anywhere, just to get away.

But nuke tests are now performed underground, where the awesome power is visible only as instrument ticks and a dimple [nuclearweaponarchive.org] in the ground. As the old scientists die, there are fewer and fewer people who have witnessed a nuclear blast as it would occur in the above-ground world.

The whole concept is so abstract, we can now discuss the idea of blowing one up on another planet, without even breaking into a sweat. Unfortunately, there are plenty of folks in the militaries of the world who can do the same sort of abstract thinking in reference to their own planet.

and after a few thousand years we'll have a brand new hospitable planet. Of course there are some drawbacks. For one, the commute is going to be hellish. But where else are we going to go after the labor market in China starts demanding decent pay and working conditions? We've got to think ahead, people!

It is much closer to 1:1 rather than 3:1. Though your point still holds - we could probably afford to cut military spending in order to increase spending on other activities, and (the cynic's view) spending on space is a good way to keep our military technical superiority even if it isn't directly weapons spending.

What people are missing is that no small chunk of that spending is really DARPA research spending. DARPA research spending constitutes MOST of all spending on advanced research in all areas of science. Although it's slotted to the military, the money isn't just being used for guns, it's being used to help perfect fusion technologies that could provide the world with plentiful cheap energy for example.

Yes the military has a combat use in mind or believes all the research could potentially benefit them, but

Terraforming Mars is fun to think about but ultimately useless. In a few billion years, our sun will go red giant and boil away Earth's oceans and royally screw up the terraformed Mars as well. If we REALLY want to think about a space travel project that has the capacity to preserve the human race after our sun runs out of hydrogen to burn, we'd start colonizing extra solar planets. That way when one sun goes nova, there's plenty of humans in other solar systems. Only then is our race truly immortal! Until

I haven't noticed "terraforming Mars" being proposed because of over-population of species-survival.

We could take care of over-population-related problems on earth if people would just stop reproducing so much. I mean, really guys... you don't need that many kids (or any?) Our planet can easily sustain us for a long time to come, at least assuming we take care of it. The damage isn't irreversible -- if we're smart, she'll last us a while.

Species-survival? Our sun's not going anywhere. Based on the usually-suggested timelines for evolution of mankind, we're just getting started, and have plenty of time to figure things out (so long as we don't wipe ourselves out first.) It would be far more in the interest of self-preservation to dismantle our nukes than to find new planets. We're a bigger danger to ourselves than the sun, or likely aliens.

No, I'd say we're thinking of terraforming Mars for other reasons:- The hell of it. (No, really.)- Research. (How does life develop? Were we an accident? Necessary?)

There's no reason to feel we need to rush it, just so we can "get down to business" using Mars for ores or habitation. We're comfortable here. We're rushing because we've watched enough sci-fi to have an idea of what might be possible -- and we want to see it happen.

Besides... the moment we set stuff down on Mars, we've got people sending us rent bills for plots of land they "own"... maybe we should get that resolved first?

According to population experts (as opposed to the lay man...) the world population will peak about 2060. Perhaps in your lifetime! China and most of Europe already does not have enough births to maintain a study population, with Europe only seeing population increases because of immigration.

Responding to you and your parent. First, colonizing Mars would increase the sustainability of our species - it is far more likely that the earth will be hit by a big astroid before the sun runs out. Furthermore, we are fairly certian that we have tons of time before the sun runs out, but cant' predict when the next big astroid will come - could be 5 years from now, or it could be 10,000. So getting all our eggs out of this basket that is Earth is more important in the short-run than getting out of the solar system.

We could take care of over-population-related problems on earth if people would just stop reproducing so much. I mean, really guys... you don't need that many kids (or any?)

Actually that is a short-sighted solution to the problem. The european birth rate has been dropping for some time now, while universal health care has been increasing life expectancy. They are now realizing that they will be in a real jam in a couple decades when the average age of the population is 64.

So, should we just let old people die? Refuse life-extending procedures? We're already trying to push back the age for retirement to get more "bang" out of a person, but that just doesn't seem like a great idea either.

Our average age is going to continue to be high unless we:- let/make people die at a younger age- have a significantly higher rate of birth than death, which means population growth

Wars could do some of that, but it seems like wars mostly kill the young, not the old. And a

Those dozens of extrasolar colonies full of humans won't just *POOF* into existence when you wait few years.

Few billion years is a frickin' *LONG* *LONG**LONG* time. It's so long it's totally incomprehensible for simple mortals like us. Worrying about something happening after billion years and trying to plan for it without intermediary steps is nuts. Eukaryotes were only born 1.5 billion years ago, and life didn't crawl out of oceans until 1 billion years ago. Maybe they shou

When the first humans start living on mars, i assume they will need all the resources availiable, and wont be interested in venting precious oxygen into the atmosphere.
However, as we get a decent foot hold established there, this will become more feasable. The article doesnt mention how many of the 'units' will be needed, but i would guess it will be a very large number. So we are probably talking about factories produceing the units from local materials.
It also seems that it would be a waste of resources

We've already got plentiful O2 factories here on earth. They're called "plants". The problem is, to build them from thier pre-fab state (seeds), you need warmth, sunlight, C02 and water. Mars is badly lacking in both the warmth and water components, the sunlight isn't that great, and the C02 is a bit thinner than what they're used to.

We also have something called "desertification" and "hunger".
Notice that i said:
"...research into it could greatly benefit us here on earth."
and not "...Minimal Units of Terraforming could greatly benefit us here on earth."
But thanks for telling me about plants, someone mod obeythefist informative!

.. welcome the notion of standing Liam and Noel Gallagher on Mars to play their own brand of 'I wish I was John Lennon' BritPop to the microbes. Unless they bred, in which case it might not be so good.. 'Maahs Attaahks' anyone?

Err... correct me if i'm being an idiot here, but I thought the reason Mars' atmosphere was so thin was because it lacks a complete magnetic field. When the planet 'died' (assuming it did) a bazillion years ago, solar wind from the sun hosed the planet and blew away much of its atmosphere, or so i'm told.

So... wouldn't that make terraforming Mars kind of like pouring water into a sieve?

Yep, that and the smaller gravitational pull of the planet. The bigger problem is that there's no van-allen belt surrounding Mars either, because the core is dead. Who'd have thunk all those volcanoes were so good for us.

The core is dead? Wasn't there a movie about this happening to Earth? Seems like they used nuclear weapons to fix it, although I haven't seen it and may be thinking of Dr. Evil's scheme from another movie [imdb.com].

Perhaps I would have gone to see The Core [thecoremovie.com] if it had been about terraforming Mars by jumpstarting the core. I don't suppose it could have gotten any less plausible.

I still think a much better idea than trying to 'fix' Mars is to just develop humans that suit the environment. I mean, its pretty inefficent to have to maintain Earth-like conditions everywhere we go, it would be much better if we could develop the technologies necessary to harden human physiology to withstand cold vaccum conditions with minimal protection. Beef up radition damage correction mechanisims by an order of magnitude or two and maybe build in some powered materials recycling equipment (why car

An interesting proposal was part of the story, "Mining the Oort" (IIRC, by either Frederick Pohl or Poul Anderson, it's sitting on the shelf at home.)

****SPOILER ALERT******

Eventually they smacked Mars with a series of comets in one locality. The impacts built a long, deep valley. They also released a pile of water vapor. Since the valley was the lowest area of topography around, most of the released vapor settled there. I forget how deep the valleys were, but in the bottoms they were able to achieve some decent partial pressures. Of course it wasn't O2, but water vapor, ammonia, and some other cometary traces. But correcting the gas mix is the 'easy' part of terraforming once you've got the right atoms in the right place.

Going for deep valleys either does away with the dome entirely, or possibly doming over the top of the valley.

Getting inhabitable valleys then looks more like the Mars of C.S. Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet."

I like ideas that use local materials and conditions to our advantage. But this has some technical problems:

You will need to seal the walls and floor of the valley/crater your using to prevent gas escapeing faster than you can pump it in.

You will also need to keep the cover in place and it will require a lot of force.
Complex plants need a minimum of about 0.5PSI to survive, and the current martian atmospheric pressure is so small it can be a saftey/fudge factor.
100 square meters worth of cover need

You will also need to keep the cover in place and it will require a lot of force. [...] 100 square meters worth of cover needs approximately 350tons of force to hold it in place. But since martian gravity is about 1/3 that of earth, we really need over a 1kiloton of force. So it isnt impossible, it's just difficult.

If the dome is sufficiently shallow, the force can be supplied simply by piling material onto the top of it.

ok, putting aside the need for a magnetic field for a moment, how about letting evolution take hold:

use a mirror to concentrate light to warm an area with water and melt it. Introduce our best microbes to said area, giving them a fair amount of nutrients from earth, but at a controlled rate. The microbes reproduce, and gradually mutate, some of these traveling to the edge of the life zone, and becoming pioneers on the mars surface: surviving with less water, etc. The life zone continues to grow, with the m

Atmospheric carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, gets removed and is replaced by oxygen, which isn't very reactive in the infrared. The atmosphere is less able to hold heat, and so the planet cools (except the exosphere, which actually heats up and increases the rate at which the atmosphere is escaping). CO2 ice builds up on the ice caps, and so the atmospheric pressure drops. These plastic greenhouses might make the planet worse.

If the atmosphere is increased by 500 fold (high mountain on Earth type pressure) it will have much much more CO2 than it does now. remember that it's only 7 bars on Mars now while it's 1024 bars on Earth. There will be plenty of CO2 to trap heat.

CO2 is really weak too remember. Heating up the atmosphere will need to be done with a coctail of CO2, CFCs PFCs, amonia, water and methane.

Everything I needed to know about terraforming I learned in kindergarten: You're not allowed to play in the neighbor's sandbox (whether nor not there's anyone home) as long as you keep pooping in your own. Nobody gets to terraform Mars until they can prove they can terraform Earth for the better, instead of for the worse. I think that's a fair test of both capability and intent, with the side benefits of a cleaner sandbox for everyone and a much better idea of what's being done wrong (and thus by whom).